the webs we weave
by Crystallinee
Summary: He would kill her if it would keep her with him, and she would do the same to herself if it meant anything. But it doesn't, so he lets her go every time. Tate/Violet, and three moments in the afterlife. Dark, sexual content, angst-fluff. Violate, various characters.


**1\. Violet** _(I'm walking on an edge)_

She thinks of him when Travis fucks her; she knows he's there, his presence lingering in the room. Of course he's there.

They're down in the basement, it wasn't really planned, but she was needy, desperate, and Travis wanted to make her feel better, and she is not in the mood for playing house with dead girls. She guess Patrick fucks him too; nothing is sacred here. They're just using each other in an endless circle, but Travis has no clue about the invisible boy not far away, his eyes darkened with pain.

Travis hoists her up against the wall and slides into her leisurely, smoothly like a lover, while Violet closes her eyes. Travis feels different inside, his body is smooth, not rough and jagged trying desperately to be gentle like Tate. She thinks of Tate's weight against her, him fucking her against the wall, the dimples in his cheeks and the seventeen bullet holes in his chest, his hardness and his hands on her just right.

She closes her eyes and hears Tate's groans when she buries her nails in her skin and pulls his head closer. Her mind reels freely, the taste of him in her mouth, hot and sticky, tasting like him, the way his eyelids flutter when he comes, and his hips against hers, the weight of him in her mouth, and she's slippery when Travis pushes into her again.

Her recent scars have opened, and she is bleeding all over his back, but Travis doesn't even notice. She thinks of Tate licking it away and she thinks of Patrick hate-fucking him in this very spot. All she remembers is his fingers in her mouth, his teeth on the side of her neck and she comes harder than she has before, making Travis choke on a moan when he finishes. There is no eye contact, no whispering words, no connection. He's using her too, and Tate would kill him for it if she let him.

Tate would hold her, breathe into her, mash their bodies together, his hips settling over hers as she wrapped her legs tightly around him and felt their release slowly seep down her legs. She remember the aftershocks, sweaty bodies and lips meeting.

Travis leans his forehead against the the rough brick wall for a moment, breathing hard, and she knows he's thinking of Constance.

Violet feels Tate's presence, so close she could reach out and her fingertips would brush the worn fabric of his shirt.

She almost smiles.

.

Later, he comes to her room.

She doesn't want him hugging her waist and crying again, when he falls to his knees she pushes him away so hard she almost falls. It makes the old sensation surface in her mouth; she can't stand to look at him, but she want to cup his face between her hands.

She craves imprints on her skin and she craves hurt, something to replace the razor blades, because there really is no escape left to have. Violet turns away and wraps her arms around herself.

"If my mother never lived in this house, would you have come to my room instead? In that suit?"

He doesn't answer.

She turns around and slaps him so hard her entire arm aches.

She wants to fade away, so far away that no one can see her and she can't see them. She wants him to choke her out, to draw lines in her skin, she want to fuck him so deep she can feel him hitting her deepest insides with every stroke. She knows he has been touching others just like she has, and she has no claim, no right, and it makes her wanna scream, some kind of fucked up sense of jealousy that her half brother is the product of her own mother and ex boyfriend.

He's still on his knees and something flickers in her eyes when she takes a step forward, blowing out smoke.

Violet takes his hands and let them settle on her hips, feeling the same stirring inside, she has really nothing else to do. His fingers fit just right around her thighs, and he looks up at her, a bruised, battered boy. He used to kiss her as if she was made of porcelain, wiping blood away on his jeans.

When he has her leaning against the wall and leggings pulled down, tilting her hips further into his face, her hands clench in his hair when he moans against her. He tastes her on his tongue and she strokes his face.

It feels so good.

.

 **2\. Tate** _(that's how I stay alive)_

He always knew he would kill for her. He would kill for anyone he liked, but there were not many that made the cut.

Watching her from afar was his way of spending eternity, and he thought back to the moments when she was still a living, breathing girl, blushing and radiating pheromones that drove him higher than coke and meth ever had. She had a darkness that he wanted to feel, and her edges were raw.

But she had torn him up and left him bleeding out. It started when he found her curled up on her bed back then, her breathing barely there, and she was _so cold_. He had tried to shake her awake, trying to think of anything that could save her - she needed to live, be free from the hell of this house.

"She needs to get her stomach pumped before her heart stops," Hayden said with a pitying smile, appearing as he struggled to lift her into the bathtub and pour icy water over her. "That is not enough to save her."

"Don't touch her!" he snarled. Violet's head was limp, falling from side to side when he shook her, and some white substance lined her lips. Tate felt her pulse repeatedly, but it slowed down, and he screamed as he felt her heart take its last, slow beats.

Hayden tilted her head to the side as if in genuine sympathy. "Why don't you just let her die? You can be with her forever."

He didn't know why he had been trying so hard to save her; he never wanted her to leave him. It had turned to an obsession too quick, but he had already started changing. Suddenly the idea of letting her have a life, free and happy away from this house, had seemed so natural. Sacrifice of love. He had always found the idea of Romeo and Juliet so enticing.

By the time she woke up in the tub next to him, dead as dead can be, all the thoughts of living without her went out the window.

When that new family moved into the house, the teenage boy with the bad music taste, he had thought that he knew what to do. He could give Violet something, a last gift, because death was his true element. She needed someone.

He used to be able to kill anyone while looking them in the eyes. It was like playing a game, one down, two down. Even their throaty bellowing of _why_ didn't bother him in the least. He had a vague memory from a dream, of an upturned table and a girl.

But now he couldn't. Couldn't bear to look them in the eyes.

Violet. Violet. _Violet._

He saw the hurt in her eyes when she came to stop him from slitting the throat of the boy, the accusation. He was lost again. He wanted her appreciation, her acknowledgment. He just wanted her to be happy.

.

He wasn't hiding anymore. They could come and get him. They were not in a better place, like he had hoped, and neither was he.

Chloe was sitting perched on top of the low wall outside the house, smoothing out her dress that was still soiled with blood. Tate tried not to look at the gaping hole in her chest.

Her eyes followed his gaze, and her pink lips stretched into a hard smile. She had always been beautiful, the cheer leading queen. Her eyes had a sparkle he had found interesting, back then, she was sharp and witty. Finding her under the table had not been his plan, but he had been far too gone to stop then. It was all hazy.

"Fun, isn't it? Spending eternity like this."

He lowered his head, but Chloe's smile stretched wider, reminding him of hard metal.

"You know, sometimes I think that I could forgive you. I liked you, Tate. You were always so nice to your sister. At least I'm not alone. You are."

She pushed away from the wall, standing up with the same grace she'd had when she was alive. There was that skip to her step that used to turn heads when she walked down the hallways in school, her black shiny hair flowing over her shoulder when she bent down in front of Tate.

"Then I remember that you are a monster. There is no such thing as forgiveness for someone like you. You _stole_ my life."

Stephanie appeared next to Chloe, her hand on her arm, looking at him.

"Pretended to have amnesia for your little girlfriend, did you?" Her black-painted lips parted to reveal teeth. "Well, I remember how my brain splattered across section D in the library. Welcome to hell, it sucks."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

Chloe's eyes filled with tears and Stephanie grasped her hand comfortingly. There was no mercy in her eyes. "You have no idea what it was like."

Kyle and Amir appeared behind him, grabbing his shoulders. Violet turned away from her window.

.

 **3\. Violet/Tate** _(I need a fix now)_

She sits on the roof, smoking. She's starting hanging out with the Dead Breakfast Club lately - once a year - but time passes fast. Stephanie _gets_ her. Chloe reminds her of Leah.

Nobody really notices her anymore, so she's taken to extreme measures to get attention.

She talks to Patrick, tries to get him riled up, but he's says she's just a child. She avoids Nora, but once she talked to Charles. When he offered to cut her up, she had left.

And her mind spins around him, always, completely. Sometimes he joins her. She plays with her cigarette, wondering how it would feel against her skin. She touches his bullet wounds, encased forever among soft flesh and muscles.

"I've really been trying to get better, you know," he says one day. He's sitting by the edge of her bed, while she is lounging, and she doesn't really care to tell him to go away any more. "I want to be a good person."

Violet curls up on the bed, in fetal position, and closes her eyes. "I can't sleep."

"Can I touch you?"

She nods. He curls his body around hers, encasing her, taking her hand in his. She floats and she imagines being alive again. He is warm against her back, she imagines his slow breaths and his heartbeat. His lips touch her hair, pressing gentle kisses against the back of her neck. Safe and nestled up against him, she knows the only thing who can hurt her is him.

Never has she been afraid of him, not even once when she thought he was going to force her to commit suicide, because it would be soothing to die next to him, like in that The Smiths song they both liked. She had run from him because she had been afraid of what would happen if she died. She had fallen right into him from the moment she saw him, because he was the only one who truly saw her.

She never did want a hero to sweep in and pick her up from her miserable family, a frat boy with a carefree smile, a transparent agenda. He knows it too, in the way his fingers tightens around hers.

Tate wants to hold her there, doesn't want to let her go again. When her conscience catches up she'll go back to isolating herself, she'll run to anyone in the house who can touch her without bruising her. He'll go back to fucking Patrick or Nora, while she tightens her arms around Travis back and kisses Chloe in the backyard. She'll glance at Michael next door, killing rodents and bunnies and Constance digging holes in the garden to bury them in.

He would kill her if it would keep her with him, and she would do the same to herself if it meant anything.

But it doesn't mean anything, so he relaxes against her back. Violet turns around and presses her face into the crook of his neck, like she used to.

She nibbles at his skin, and he groans and and bares his throat for her.

He lets her go every time.

* * *

 _Before I die  
I will have seen it all  
The mountains I have climbed  
Help me enjoy the fall_

* * *

 **Feedback is very appreciated!**


End file.
